Cruise Ship Drugs

Huge Cruise Ship Drug Arrest Elderly Cruise Ship Passenger Arrested

April 12, 2009, Huge Cruise Ship Drug Arrest of Elderly Cruise Ship Passenger on Splendor Of The Seas in Cadiz, Spain

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Elderly Cruise Ship Passenger Arrested for Drugs

April 12, 2009 - Huge Cruise Ship Drug Arrest on Splendor Of The Seas in Cadiz, Spain

Police in Spain have broken up a drug-trafficking network which used pensioners to smuggle cocaine into the country on board luxury cruise liners. The network used women posing as tourists who picked up the drugs in South America, hiding them in their suitcases to hand over them to another network member once the ships docked in Spain.

27 kilos of cocaine were found in a cabin on board Splendor Of The Seas when it docked in port in Cádiz on April 12, 2009.

It’s thought the drugs were picked up when the ship docked in Brazil. The cocaine was destined for Cataluña and Ibiza, officials said.

Nine arrests were made in total, including one of the suspected leaders who was arrested in Lepe, Huelva, while attempting to cross over into Portugal and then escape by plane to Brazil.

Splendor Of The Seas had been sailing between South American ports for sometime.

In the prior months, the ship had been sailing between Brazilian ports only. Then on April 4, 2009 the ship took a repositioning transoceanic cruise to Europe, leaving Recife, Brazil at 5 pm, with six nights at sea as the vessel sailed towards Europe with the cocaine aboard. Smugglers had seized the repositioning cruise schedule as an opportunity to move the large cache of cocaine to Europe.

Nine arrests were made in total, including one of the suspected leaders who was arrested in Lepe, Huelva, while attempting to cross over into Portugal and then escape by plane to Brazil.

"The group included members of an advanced age who boarded luxury transatlantic cruises to pick up the narcotic in South America. The 'mules' would pass themselves off as tourists to try to elude police controls," said a police statement.

Another arrest in Spain lead to seizure of 162 kilos of cocaine that had been hidden in plastic bananas, within a shipment of real fruit.

Following the operation four people have been arrested, and police believe one of them is the leader of the ring responsible for maintaining contacts with the Colombian drug cartels that supplied the narcotics.

“These contacts led him to travel to the interior of the Colombian jungle to personally supervise the shipment of the cocaine and inspect its quality,” the statement added.

In March 2009 a 66-year-old Chilean man was arrested at the Barcelona, Spain airport after customs agents discovered that his broken leg was supported by a “cast” made out of cocaine. Later that month police detained a 35-year-old man in Barcelona who received a parcel in the mail from Venezuela via London containing a dinner set that was made with 20 kilos of cocaine.